


Balance (Working Title)

by StephirothWasTaken



Series: No Magic No Kingdom AU [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baby Noctis Lucis Caelum, Baby Prompto Argentum, M/M, No Magic No Kindgom AU, Parent Cor Leonis, Sad Attempt at Romance, child at risk, child endangerment, more tags as I go along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29786430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StephirothWasTaken/pseuds/StephirothWasTaken
Summary: Cor Leonis just wants to focus on his son for a while, but he can't get his friends off his back about dating. Nyx is working hard to keep his new bar afloat, but when he meets the hot former Marshal, he has a shift in priorities.When Noctis is suddenly kidnapped, Nyx runs to go save him, and Cor goes to save him.-Or a disastrous romance between two self-sacrificing idiots.
Relationships: Clarus Amicitia/Gladiolus & Iris Amicitia's Mother, Cor Leonis/Nyx Ulric
Series: No Magic No Kingdom AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1307753
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first real attempt at writing a romance. I followed a romance guide by [C. S. Lakin](https://www.livewritethrive.com/2016/08/22/20-key-scenes-for-writers-of-romance-novels/), but I will admit that I didn’t follow it very well. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I will complain about it quite a few times in my notes. haha Hopefully I manage to keep it interesting enough.
> 
> Also, it's my birthday. This is my gift to myself.

As Cor fumbled around the side table for his beeping alarm clock, he fought the urge to grab it and throw it across the room. With a sigh, he stretched his long limbs, feeling the coldness of the empty bed beside him, but he still felt groggy as he sat upright, rubbing his heavy eyes. The room was dark and silent, and he knew that, if he opened the curtains, he would find outside looked the same way.

Cor took a quick shower, and he put on an all-black suit. He went without the tie, allowing the top few buttons to remain open. His boss used to tease him about it, but it was within company policy to dress like that.

With guilt twisting in his belly, he went to the door across from his room. He had painted “Prompto” in neat letters on it. As he opened the door, he could make out soft snoring. Light from the street lamp poured into the room through a crack in the curtains. Toys littered the floor, but it was not as bad as it had been the previous morning. A tuft of blond hair poked out from the mess of blankets on the bed. 

“Hey, buddy,” he called, keeping his voice low, “it’s time to get up.”

It took a couple more tries to get the blond to push down his blankets and blink his sleepy blue eyes at him.

“Hm?” the boy grumbled.

“I know it’s too early, but we have to get going.”

Cor waited for Prompto to climb out of bed before he left him alone. It had been too many times when he would wake him and then have to wake him again a few minutes later, and that meant twice the guilt for Cor. He went into the kitchen, and he grabbed himself a can of shitty coffee. Better coffee waited for him at Regis’s house, but he needed the caffeine now if he wanted to be a safe driver with his son in the car.

It took a few minutes for Prompto to enter the kitchen while slinging his schoolbag slung over his shoulder. He wore his coat, and he had his overnight bag tucked under his arm. His blond hair was an unruly mess of curls, and his big blue eyes were half-closed, ready to go back to sleep at any moment.

Cor waited for the boy to complain about waking too early in the morning, about him interrupting his precious sleep on a school day, but he never complained about this routine. Even after five years in Cor’s care, Prompto so readily accepted his life as it was because he trusted him. It only made the guilt more biting.

“Are you ready to go?” Cor asked, keeping his voice soft.

Prompto yawned as he nodded, and Cor ruffled his wild hair. He steered the boy to the car. It was not long before Prompto fell asleep to the hum of the car, pillowing his head with his arm against the door.

The Lucis Caelum Manor was an overwhelming place, as most Lucis Caelum-owned things were. It was a massive building designed to house several more families than had ever actually lived in it. Guards and tall fences lined the perimeter of the property, and a quick flash of his ID to the man—a new hire named Tredd Furia, apparently—at the gate got him inside the property. He took the car down the winding path toward the employee side entrance, even though his boss considered him a family friend until they got to work.

Cor grabbed Prompto’s things from the back seat before exiting the car, and he was gentle as he gathered the boy in his arms. Prompto did little more than snuggle into him.

His asshole friends liked to remind him he was going to have to stop coddling his son at some point, but Cor figured it was fine in moments like this when the poor kid had to put up with being woken up far too early.

It was early enough that there were no overeager servants bustling about making sure the massive building was clean or fattening up the guests with sweets—which he knew Regis ordered them to do because he was a grandmother trapped in a middle-aged man’s body.

The family bedrooms were in the west wing of the upper floors. Regis’s bedroom was beyond the double doors at the end of the hall, but his son Noctis’s room was a single door on the perpendicular wall. His door was unlocked, and Cor went inside the dark space. Two soft snores ended the eerie silence of the mansion. He assumed the second snore was Ignis Scientia, who spent more time with the Lucis Caelums than he did with his legal guardian.

Cor knew the room well enough to walk through without bumping his shins on a low coffee table. He rested Prompto on the couch, earning a slight grumble from him. After he set Prompto’s bags on the floor, he fumbled his hands along the back of the couch for the throw blanket, and he draped it over his son.

Cor left the three sleeping boys alone, and he sighed as he closed the door behind him, guilt still toiling in his belly. He opened the double doors, revealing the soft lighting of a single lamp deeper into the room. The bedroom was like a luxury studio apartment. Every piece of furniture was older than all the manor’s occupants’ combined ages.

Regis sat on the edge of his king-sized, four-poster bed, and he rubbed his swollen left knee absently while turning his green eyes to Cor. His black hair was a mess about his head, and his beard hid any expression he might have had beyond annoyance at being awake.

Clarus approached the bed with Regis’s cane. White streaked his dark brown hair, skipping the graying stage completely. His blue eyes were puffy and red as he rubbed the sleep out of them, a confirmation that he had stayed the night.

“Ah, good morning, Cor,” Regis said.

“Hey, kid,” Clarus said, and he flashed one of his annoying smirks.

Cor rolled his eyes. He might have been a degree-holding twenty-three-year-old, but that would never be enough to get the man to stop calling him “kid” as long as he remained an entire decade younger than him.

“Morning,” he said. “I brought Prompto into Noct’s room.”

“Good. Jared spent the night, and he’ll be taking the boys to school.”

Cor nodded. There were few men in this world that he trusted to drive his son around, and Jared, Clarus’s butler, was on that short list. The two other men in the room sometimes made it on it, too, but most days, he would rather not subject him to their whims.

“I’ll go make breakfast,” Cor said. “Try not to make us late to work this time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clarus said, and he made a shooing motion toward the door.

Cor left Clarus to help Regis around his room with his swollen knee. He walked through the massive mansion, and he turned on lights as he went to the kitchen. It had enough modern appliances to cook for a huge party, even though Regis had never once organized such a party within his home.

By the time Clarus and Regis made it downstairs, Cor had made coffee, scrambled eggs, and toast. He could make something better than that, but he was in no mood to do so. They offered no complaints, except Regis, who always grimaced at the lack of sugar in his coffee but never made a move to fix it how he liked it.

Regis never failed to smother his scrambled eggs in ketchup, however, no matter what Cor put into them.

“So, how are you liking your new position?” Clarus asked as he poured an unhealthy amount of salt all over his breakfast.

“Clarus, let’s not pressure him so early in the morning,” Regis scolded.

“What? Just making conversation. Besides, if we never ask the kid about it, he would never complain about it.”

“Oh, he complains plenty. You just deliberately ignore it.”

“First of all, I ignore your complaints, not Cor’s, and second, I know you’ve been dying to ask him about it, too.”

Both men turned to Cor. He shrugged a shoulder.

“It’s all right” was all he could think to say. He had been working as both Regis’s personal accountant and the new manager for his small charity. While it was a lot of work at the moment, once he got settled into it, he was certain it would be easier to manage everything.

“I hope it’s not too much pressure on you,” Regis said. “When Clarus suggested it, I worried that working two jobs would be too much work.”

“Monica has been a great help, so it hasn’t been that cumbersome.”

“Your new assistant, right?” Clarus asked. “You guys have been getting along?”

“She's wonderful, but why do you two always ask me that?”

“Our children and your son are the only people I’ve witnessed you being nice to. Unconditionally.”

“I’m okay around people.”

“Oh, little brother,” Regis butted in, smiling, “I’m afraid that’s not true.”

Cor threw Regis an incredulous look, and he pressed a hand to his chest in feigned hurt.

“What the hell?” he said. “I am a people person.”

“You’re impossible to please,” Clarus corrected, “and you never fail to let people know. Regis stopped letting you into business meeting meetings because you kept scaring business partners away with that intense look of yours.”

“That’s just my face. I can’t help what my face looks like.”

“You have ridiculously high standards. It’s why you can’t keep a boyfriend—”

Regis punched Clarus in the arm, who yelped with surprise, and he cut a glare at him.

“Let’s not start this argument again,” Regis explained. “It’s too damn early to start another argument about Cor’s love life.”

No one mentioned it was Regis’s fault they got up so early.

“Why is everyone always on my ass,” Clarus began, “because I can tell Cor’s miserable? He’s been sulking since his last breakup.”

Cor could only sigh in response. There was a truth to Clarus’s words. He avoided speaking about it with Clarus in particular, but he missed the comforting presence of a warm bed next to him at night. Once upon a time, he used to get men into his bed easily, and now, with a boy who relied on him for love and stability, he was far more careful with who he brought home.

Up until a few months ago, he had not been as careful as he realized he should have been, introducing his boy to a new boyfriend every few months. It was not the stable life he knew Prompto deserved, and he had left the dating scene to focus on his son. Cor found it difficult to adjust, but he had made so many other difficult adjustments in his life that he knew he could eventually figure this one out as well.

Clarus’s attempts to help him made it more difficult.

“He’s a grown man who can make his own decisions,” Regis said, “and this one in particular is none of our business. Leave him be on this.”

Cor rolled his eyes because no amount of admonishment from Cor or Regis would ever get the oldest of them to stop once he set his mind to something.

“All right, all right,” Clarus sighed, and he leaned back in his chair as he brought his mug of coffee to his lips. “I’ll let off. For now.”

Regis sighed.

“Let’s get to work,” he said. “We’ll run late if we don’t get to the car right now.”

Everyone crammed as much food into their mouths as they could as they scrambled to do just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This went through a rather intense editing to cut out a lot of repetitive stuff and make the dialogue more believable, but now I'm worried I cut out too much. Haha


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had not expected these three to be the biggest potty mouths. It was supposed to be Clarus and Cor. Thank goodness the game has plenty of cursing because I might have felt compelled to dial it back otherwise.

Nyx sighed as he heard laughter floating outside the apartment before he opened the door. His hands were sore, which he had never considered a potential issue before, and there was a dull ache in the side of his head. He was not in the mood to deal with two overly excitable friends after a busy day at work, but he lived with them, which meant he had to put up with them.

Nyx jammed his key into the lock, and he slipped into the apartment, the scents of spicy food assaulting his senses. The living room was empty, except for the ragged secondhand furniture. He let himself fantasize about sneaking into his bedroom to catch some sleep before dealing with another human being, but he knew Libertus would sick Crowe on him for neglecting them.

“I’m home!” he called, and he heard Libertus shout they were in the kitchen.

After hanging up his jacket, Nyx shuffled into the kitchen. He found his two friends sitting at their small, round table.

Libertus had tied back his brown hair into a ponytail instead of putting it in its usual beaded braids, something that would have horrified him before they had taken multiple jobs to help them afford to live in the most expensive city on all continents. Their laptop sat next to his plate of skewers, and he had put on his reading glasses to help him read the screen.

Crowe turned in her chair as she heard him enter. Her dark brown hair was up in its typical messy bun, and she wore her comfiest sleeveless shirt and pajama bottoms. Bare feet rested on the chair where Nyx sat during meals. She raised an eyebrow as she looked him over.

“Damn, Nyx,” she said. “You look like shit.”

Nyx snorted.

“Thanks, buddy,” he said.

Libertus glanced up from the laptop, and his eyebrows flew up to his hairline.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “Busy day today?”

“Yeah, we had a big church crowd today during one of the busiest hours, and we were understaffed.”

“Damn, man.”

It would all feel worth it when he got the larger than usual paycheck. Nyx had not even been scheduled to come in that day. He had taken over a coworker’s shift, despite not having a day off in a couple weeks.

It was no wonder he felt so damn tired.

“Hey, Crowe, heat something for Nyx,” said Libertus, the only man in the world who got away with ordering Crowe around without promising her a paycheck. “I know you’re tired, brother, but I know you probably haven’t eaten anything today.”

Nyx opened his mouth to protest until he recalled he had eaten only a granola bar that morning.

Crowe got up from the table without complaining, and he knew he must have looked truly pathetic. Nyx sighed as he sat down at the table. He reached up a hand and rubbed his temple to soothe his oncoming headache.

“What have you two been up to?” Nyx asked, attempting to be friendly despite his mood.

“Libertus is just complaining about shit again,” Crowe said as she waited for Nyx’s food to finish heating in the microwave. “The usual.”

“Those Insomnian bastards still haven’t given us our grant money!” Libertus complained, not even denying anything Crowe had said. “They won’t answer my damn emails either!”

“Listen, Libs,” Crowe said. “I keep telling you we’ll be fine. We just save up a little more money, make a few more sacrifices here and there, but we can still set up a bar.”

“Yeah, yeah, just not in the best district for making money.”

The three of them had been dreaming of opening a bar for years. Libertus and Nyx had helped run one when they had been too young legally work there legally, but it was not until they had convinced Pelna, the smartest of their friends, to attend a community college that they had found someone to help with the financial aspect of running a bar, making the dream more attainable.

All they had needed after that was money. Their hard-earned savings had helped them, especially with Crowe’s surprisingly large contributions, but it had not been enough. They had stumbled across information for the Nightsky Foundation, a Skylight Industries-sponsored charity that handed grants to immigrants displaced from their homes during the Great War.

After they received a call from Drautos, the guy in charge of the charity, they had gotten fancy suits to help them blend in with the fancy people in the Citadel, not that it had helped much. Drautos had made them sign a few forms, and then he had told them to keep an eye out for the money during the next couple of weeks. It was several months later, and the grant money had never made its ways into the bank account they had set up together for their bar.

Libertus was the most vocal about his dismay over this, but all of them had felt the crushing heartbreak of it. All of them, Pelna included, had grown up in shitty orphanages, had worked their asses off to accomplish a shared dream, and just when they had thought they had gotten close to achieving it, they had gotten the bitter taste of disappointment instead.

A buzz from Nyx’s pocket startled him, and he pulled out his cell phone. It was a text from one of his bosses, asking him to cover a girl’s evening shift.

“Buddy, if that’s someone asking you to take over someone’s shift,” Libertus said, “I would suggest telling them ‘no.’ You already look like you’ve been through hell.”

“It’s the same shift as yours, so I think I’ll be fine,” Nyx said. “I just need food, a nap, and a shower, and I’ll be fine.”

“You’ve been working multiple shifts every day for—what? Two weeks?”

Nyx did not know how he should feel about his friend keeping track of his work schedule that closely.

“It was worse when we were hunters,” Nyx said with a shrug. “Besides, we need to work for that bar just a little longer, right?”

“Nyx, if there’s anything I ever said in my life that you need to take seriously, I think ‘taking a break so you don’t kill yourself’ is probably one of the most important things I’ve ever said.”

“I’ll listen to your advice when you start listening to it.”

Libertus rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in defeat.

“All right, but I’ll be putting ‘workaholic’ right under ‘self-sacrificing idiot’ on your tombstone.”

“Galahdians cremate their dead,” Crowe reminded him, and she smirked as he glared at her.

“On his urn, then, smartass.”

Nyx just rolled his eyes at them. He turned back to his phone, and he sent his boss a message that he was taking the shift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original goal was to have this finished by the time my birthday hit so I could post throughout the month, and it would be mostly edited into something I like. Unfortunately, I'm only about a quarter of the way along because I have a goldfish brain (and I am actively working to change that but struggling really hard).
> 
> I'm not sure if I should wait until I'm finished to start posting again or try posting once a week and hope I have a decent enough buffer to help me stick to a schedule this time (I always end up panic-writing at some point when I schedule an unfinished fic). It might have been even better to wait to post at all, but it’s my birthday, damn it. I want to post things, especially after so long without posting anything.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I would love to know what you think! Comments and kudos and deeply appreciated and highly motivating.


End file.
